Review: Don't Stop Now by Julie Halpern

Julie Halpern totally won me over with Into the Wild Nerd Yonder, so even though Don't Stop Now didn't promise me nerdy D&D hijinks, I still needed to check it out. There may be no D&D, but I love road trips, so I thought this would be worth a shot - and I was totally right.

When Lillian's sorta-friend, Penny, leaves her a weird voice mail at 4:30 in the morning, Lil doesn't think much of it. "I did it?" What does that even mean? But then her parents started calling. And then the cops. Apparently Penny has been kidnapped?

Except Lil is pretty sure Penny faked it - she kind of mentioned that once. And Lil has a feeling she may have run away to Oregon. So she calls up her BFF (and major-crush) Josh, and the two set out on a road trip from Chicago to Portland with nothing but Josh's dad's credit card and the clothes on their backs. Along the way the dynamic duo stop at all the great tourist-attractions of fly-over country - the Badlands, Wall Drug, the Corn Palace, etc. And Lil keeps hoping that this trip, probably their last great adventure before she moves away for college and Josh starts pursuing his music career in earnest, will be the trip that makes Josh see her as more than just a girl friend.

In between the chapters of Lil and Josh's antics, we also get short, heartbreaking scenes from Penny's life over the last year or so. Glimpses of a family that uses her as nothing more than a baby sitter, and boyfriend that uses her as a doormat - and a punching bag. It's not hard to figure out why Lil might have decided to run away - but did she really fake that kidnapping?

This story is a road trip and story of friendship first and foremost - the long term friendship between Lil and Josh, as well as the lengths Lil will go to in order to help someone who didn't have a lot of options in the friend-department. The romantic angle was played just right. There's some angst here, because Lil has pretty much always loved Josh but he's never seen it, but that never overwhelms their friendship. Even when she's a little disappointed that they only literally slept together in a cozy motel bed, she still has fun with their zany road trip.

Even though for most of the story we only get small insights into Penny, I really liked her as a character, too. Who didn't have a friend/acquaintance that they knew just well enough to say "hi" to at parties and work on projects together if there was no one else in the class? And a lot of us have probably been in friendships like that where one person clearly read a lot more into it than the other did. The vignettes also painted a clear picture of why someone might stay with a boyfriend (or girlfriend) who clearly isn't right for them - who can be outright abusive. It's terrifying and played exactly right - Penny's story lends some gravitas to what would otherwise be a light romantic comedy.

Julie Halpern is two-for-two with me so far. Her characters are always dynamic, funny and honest. I can't wait to see what she comes out with next!

What Have I Missed? Review: How I Live Now by Meg Rosoff

This is supposed to be my February book...but I ran out of days in February, thanks to my vacation/honeymoon. So here's the anxiously-awaited (if responses to my Goodreads review tweet are any indication!) of 2005 Printz Award winner How I Live Now.

In an attempt to escape her father and her horrible new stepmother, Manhattanite Daisy is spending the summer in rural England with family she hardly knows - her mother's sister and her four children. What is supposed to be a boring and relaxing summer takes a turn for the unexpected when, a day after her aunt has left the country on business, war breaks out in England.

Alone in the countryside, the five kids band together as a family in ways Daisy never imagined possible - from becoming so close they're practically telepathic to the decidedly more than familial love she shares with Edmond. But as the danger moves closer to their secluded outpost, Daisy must draw on reserves of strength she hardly knows she has to try to keep the little family together.

Pretty much every review of this I saw before going in brings up the incest - and now I guess I'm guilty of that too. But all of those reviews made such a big deal out of it I was sure I was going to end up with a romance story with some vaguely dystopian feelings. Let me assure you, that's totally not the case. Really, I'm kind of surprised that cousin-incest really gets people up in arms at this point. Just because you don't want to bang your cousin doesn't mean it's actually the grossest thing in the world. Much grosser: undead boyfriends that watch you sleep and try to control who you can spend time with. Or kidnappers. Abusive relationships of any kind, really. Priorities, people.

What this is, is a survival story. This is about how Daisy finds the strength, through extraordinary circumstances, to stop beating herself up and rediscovering her family and her will to live.

But ultimately, that wasn't quite enough to keep me riveted to the story. I put the book down a couple of times and wandered away to read something else. It may have had something to do with the writing style - it's very postmodern what with its complete absence of quotation marks. Considering the kids are pretty much psychic that makes it very hard to tell what is actually spoken and what is thought. The psychic-abilities were a bit random themselves - the whole of the writing just felt rather unsettling and unjustified.

What I did like was how Rosoff was able to subtly show how Daisy evolves over the course of the novel. There are hardly any moments when these changes are stated outright and instead they're left for the reader to pick up on and contemplate. An excellent example of an author trusting her audience to get it without hitting us over the head with character development or Messages.

Review: When the Stars Go Blue by Caridad Ferrer

Found via: Ari at Reading in Color

Ari has been raving about this book for months - I'm so glad I could finally get my hands on it! My reaction (spoiler alert!) isn't quite as enthusiastic as hers, but I still found it to be a worthwhile read.

Soledad Reyes knows nothing but dance. Since she first set foot in the ballet studio as a child, she's known she wants to live life on the stage - preferably as a ballerina, even though physically she's quite different from ballerina norms. But when she starts a passionate romance with Jonathan, a guy who's as passionate about music as she is about dance, Soledad wants to give his type of performance a try for a summer, and joins the exhausting and exhilarating world of competitive drum and bugle corp. The local group is putting on an ambitious adaptation of Carmen, and Soledad will be perfect for the title role.

As Soledad is drawn deeper into the drum and bugle corp, and into her relationship with Jonathan, Soledad is tired but happy. Until a handsome Spanish soccer player arrives and along with his team seems to be following Soledad's team from county fair to county fair, and Soledad's summer begins to have some eerie parallels to the opera she's starring in.

In the midst of this novel, I absolutely could not put this thing down. I was totally absorbed from page one. For one thing, Ferrer has nailed the descriptions of the thrill of performing. I was never much of a dancer, but I did musical theater for most of my life, so I definitely got Soledad's passion and need to be performing. I also liked how the romance doesn't take much time to heat up - there's no extended, frustrating flirtation here. Once Soledad and Jonathan know how the other one feels it starts getting steamy.

All through Soledad's passionate affair with Jonathan and the new world of drum and bugle corp performance, I was right there with her, soaring with her highs and absolutely crushed with her lows. Thrilled with the innocent flirtations of the handsome Spanish soccer player and crushed every time something worked to keep Soledad and Jonathan apart.

But when I finished the book, and started to reflect...it just didn't hold up. While Ferrer hits all of the emotional beats just right, and does an excellent job of describing those emotions, there are moments of more tangible actions where the description is lacking. Like I'm still not sure I totally get how drum and bugle corp works - when Jonathan shows Soledad a DVD of a previous performance, Ferrer does an excellent job of describing Soledad's emotions, to the point of not really describing what she's actually seeing!

I was also really uncomfortable Jonathan's behavior, and Soledad's overall reactions to it. Ferrer does an amazing job of showing how a passionate relationship can quickly slip into an emotionally dangerous one, but I felt Soledad was way too willing to forgive and rationalize Jonathan's behavior in the end - and I can't help but feel in the end she's setting herself up to be hurt all over again. She tells us how her new relationship has and will be different - but I never saw any clear signs that it will be.

I wasn't familiar with Carmen going into the book, and the story of the opera is also never really fleshed out, just like the world of drum and bugle corp. However when I looked up the opera on Wikipedia, it looks like Ferrer has done an amazing job weaving in parallels between Soledad's and Carmen's stories.

But there was also a lot to like here, too. I loved Soledad's confidence in her body, even as she acknowledges she's physically different from ballerina norms. Her relationship with Mamacita is beautiful, and while her dance partner Raj flirts with some fabulous stereotypes, I did like that his presence illustrated that there was some diversity regarding sexual orientation in the all-male corp, and gave Soledad someone to talk about boys with in a story that has only three female characters.

There are some strong feminist moments in here that had me cheering early on - Soledad's confidence in her body and sexuality, as well as Taz's encouragement of a little girl who dreams of playing soccer (I'll admit, I teared up a little. I'm a sucker for encouraging girls to follow their dreams!) were big bonuses. And of course, there's the novelty of getting a book about a young woman of color where her ethnic background is an integral part of her character but not the focus of the story. But ultimately the reactions to Jonathan in the end left me feeling on the fence overall. This is an excellent romance in multiple senses of the word - including the cliche of the genre that you shouldn't think too hard about it. Accept that it's hot and sexy and just go with the flow.

Review: The View from the Top by Hillary Frank

I picked this up for one reason: the Publisher's Weekly review said it was an "intimate exploration of postgraduate ennui," which I'll admit kind of made me giggle, but also interested me because I love YA that explores the upper age limit of the genre. There are lots of stories about 15 and 16 year olds falling in and out of love, but fewer that explore that precarious time when one really begins to transition from "kid" to "adult."

It's Annabelle's last summer in her small coastal hometown before she heads off to Oberlin to study music in the fall, and it's a season of questions and change. She breaks up with her longtime boyfriend, but doesn't choose to pursue his best friend, even though she's had a huge crush on him. Instead she starts hanging out with a tourist girl, in town just for the summer. Other players in Annabelle's story include her boyfriend's little sister, who has long had a crush on the beautiful older girl, and another musician, who is also in love with Annabelle and doesn't know how to show it. The story of their summer is told from their various points of view.

Annabelle is the center of this story. Which is all well and good...if I found her to be at all likable. Ennui is one thing, but I never found Annabelle to be at all sympathetic, as she was rather self-absorbed, and I couldn't understand why she was at the center of so many people's lives. The story has a strong premise, examining how one person's actions or inaction can affect the lives around her like ripples in a lake, and the end of high school is the perfect setting for such a story, but Annabelle was far too shaky of a foundation to build such a story on.

Review: The Snowball Effect by Holly Nicole Hoxter

The first line of the jacket copy on this book made me thing I was in for a quirky-dark family comedy of sorts "18 year old Lainey Pike can tell you everything you need to know about the people in her family just by telling you how they died." Death is serious, of course, but am I the only one who finds that to be a mildly amusing way to introduce the topic?

I've always had a morbid sense of humor.

Lainey's family is unconventional - she hardly knows her older half-sister, Vallery, as she spent most of her life living with her dad. Her younger brother, Collin, is adopted and has behavioral issues ranging from being on the autism spectrum to ADHD. The three are thrust together to make a new family after their mother kills herself in the basement laundry room.

Lainey is angry and confused. At her mom. At her sister. Even at her long term boyfriend, who is kind and sweet and loving, even with Collin. But the end of high school marks a major life transition, even when half of your family hasn't dropped dead, and Lainey is wondering whether the path she's always had set before her is where she belongs.

Lainey and Vallery are definitely the best developed characters in the book. I kind of got frustrated with how little time was devoted to Collin - he's the whole reason Vallery comes into the story after all. His behavioral and/or developmental issues make communication difficult, but really no one, not even his teachers (who are trained to deal with emotional and developmental difficulties), questions whether his behavior may stem from grief and/or abandonment issues? The boy was adopted as a toddler, so he was in the foster care system for awhile before being adopted, and in short order his adoptive father and mother die violently (motorcycle accident and suicide by hanging). It seemed like sloppy character development, or lack thereof - throw in a character with a disability so the disability can stand in place of a personality.

On the other hand, I loved Lainey's romantic turmoil, between her long-term safe and stable boyfriend, and the rugged, drifter new guy she meets at the 7-11 when she doesn't have the cash for a Slurpee. What's great is Hoxter doesn't give us any easy answers - this isn't the classic love triangle with Lainey pining between the two boys. There's ambiguity here in the relationships and Lainey's feelings. So much YA ends with the lead couple declaring their undying love for each other - and while I don't doubt people feel that way at times, it seems like Lainey's dilemma must be more common.

Review: Sellout by Ebony Joy Wilkins

Found via: Reading in Color

I've said it before and I'll say it again: my social justice weak points are gender, sexual orientation, race and class. When a book hits any one of those sweet spots, I give it at least a second glance. Hit two or more, and its assured a spot on my to-read list. I've been waiting on this one since April, when Ari highlighted it as her Waiting on Wednesday title, since it looked like it was going to squarely hit race and class head on.

NaTasha is the only Black girl in her affluent New Jersey suburb. She spends a week every summer with her grandmother in Harlem, but otherwise NaTasha spends all of her time with her white girlfriends, doing things like silly contests to see whose hair grows the longest during the school year - a contest NaTasha knows she can't win with her nappy hair, even if her mom irons it straight regularly.

After a ballet recital where NaTasha's attempts to fit in with her white peers have disastrous results, her grandmother, Tilly, decides a mere week in Harlem isn't enough. NaTasha is going to spend most of her summer in the city, working with her grandmother at Amber's Place, a community center for troubled girls up in the Bronx.

After her first day at Amber's Place, NaTasha is sure she won't fit in with these girls any better than the white girls back home. For while these girls have brown skin, they immediately peg NaTasha as a sellout - someone who acts white and thinks she's better than her Black peers. But NaTasha decides to stick it out a bit longer, out of respect to Tilly, and hopes that sooner rather than later she really will find herself.

I totally understood Tilly's desire for NaTasha to get in touch with her roots. Her actions at the ballet recital (weaving scarves into her hair to give the illusion of a hair bun) indicate on some level that she's embarrassed or ashamed of who she is. Some time up in Harlem could do her some real good, showing her how other African American women love and accept the way they look. However, making her volunteer at Amber's Place really came out of nowhere. What is NaTasha supposed to learn from girls that have been abused, and even continue to abuse themselves? And then making NaTasha take part in the activities like she was just another girl - of course she and the girls are going to clash! To them, NaTasha doesn't have a real problem in the world. And in some ways, I felt that sending her to Amber's Place did make light of NaTasha's problems - they are rather "first world" problems (you need to feel that your basic needs are being met - food, shelter, safety - before you can start worrying about your identity and fitting in socially), but that doesn't make them any less real for NaTasha.


The other girls at Amber's Place, however, are totally and heartbreakingly real. Each of them has a story to tell, and especially Shaunda's and Monique's will make you rage at the injustices of the world that two otherwise bright young women would feel they are deserving of anything less than love and respect. Quiana, NaTasha's primary tormentor, also has a story to tell, making her anger perfectly understandable.


Once NaTasha gets to Harlem, the story really picks up and I enjoyed it - it's just the framing device, getting NaTasha into Harlem and the Bronx, falls a little flat and could have been handled with much more depth.

Review: Little Blog on the Prairie by Cathleen Davitt Bell

I wasn't a Little House on the Prairie fan as a kid. Admittedly, I don't recall actually giving the books or the TV show a chance, I was just pretty sure I wouldn't like them and went on my way. Luckily, the Little House allusions seem to be primarily confined to the title, so don't think you have to be a fan in some way to enjoy this thoroughly entertaining book.

Gen's family isn't big on "family time," as each family member seems to be going in her or his own direction at any given time. Her dad doesn't even get involved with vacation plans, preferring to leave all that to her mom - which is how the family gets signed up for an entire summer at Camp Frontier - an immersive summer experience where families live, dress and work like they're on the Wyoming frontier in 1890.

To 13 year old Gen, this is the end of the world. She's supposed to be hanging out with her best friends and practicing soccer all summer so she'll be prepared for the high school's team in the fall. So her mom bribes her - come to camp without complaint, and get a fancy cell phone at the end of the summer. Gen agrees, but the allure of the phone is too much - she sneaks it to camp, promising to text her friends for as long as the battery holds out (after all, there was no electricity on the frontier - where will she charge the phone?)

Several families have come together to live the frontier life for the summer - and none of the kids seem terribly fond of the idea, including Nora, the daughter of Camp Frontier's organizers who has to live every day like it's 1890. Almost immediately, Gen bonds with Ka (short for Kate, rhymes with Saw, her favorite movie), the goth chick from a family of perky blondes set adrift without her supply of black  hair dye to keep her own blond roots at bay. And then there's the camp heartthrob, Caleb, who has just about every girl in the camp swooning in his wake, but doesn't seem to realize this.

The complicated interpersonal relationships, as well as the hardships and indignities of life on the prairie (three words: outhouse at night), are faithfully recounted by Gen via text message - which her friends back on the outside are faithfully translating into a blog. And not just any blog, but an overnight blogging sensation that has repercussions all the way back to the 1890s life of Camp Frontier.

This is a lighthearted, feel good book, totally entertaining book that is going to appeal to a variety of middle grade and young adult readers. Gen is only 13, and keeps her thoughts about Caleb on a totally PG level - when she discovers an illicit "electricity shack" on the farm, her first thought is about charging her phone, not about getting Caleb alone. Her sarcastic attitude is just enough to keep readers used to edgier fare interested in her misadventures on the farm, while being tempered with an innate sweetness that keeps her from coming off as a spoiled teenager. Gen isn't happy about being at Camp Frontier, but she does love her family, and is willing to put on a good face at least for their sake for the duration of the adventure.

The book is filled with great supporting characters as well. Even the adults have some personality - I about cheered when the moms threatened a feminist uprising when the camp owner tries to keep the women from speaking (Gen's mom is the first to point out that Wyoming had given women the vote well before 1890, meaning that women would certainly be used to speaking in their communities if nowhere else). Of course, bringing up that women were expected to fulfill 19th century societal roles gets a bit uncomfortable if you follow it to its logical conclusion - if you expect women to keep quiet, what would happen if an African- or Asian-American family signed up? It seems like some aspects of 1890 are best left ignored, like the corsets that aren't required thanks to liability issues. The feminist uprising is extremely brief, just a quick opportunity for some educational humor, and clearly isn't meant to be dwelt on.

Another educational bit is the mini-moral slipped in by the end regarding technology and expectations of privacy. It's not heavy handed, over the top, or totally obvious, but hopefully it will get younger readers thinking about privacy issues regarding e-mails and text messages - namely that once a message leaves your phone or computer, you no longer have much control over who else might see it.

While I know the summer is winding down, there's still a few weeks left for most people, and this would make an excellent last minute addition to your summer reading list!

Review: Every Little Thing in the World by Nina de Gramont

Found via: Publisher's Weekly 3/1

When Blogging for Choice day hit earlier this year, I wanted to write a thematically appropriate blog post, looking at YA books where characters have had or considered abortions.

The list was ridiculously short. Thus, no blog post this year.

Discussing this with a friend at the time, we concluded that a big part of the reason there were fewer books "about" abortion was because it's seen as undramatic - with a story of a young girl going through a pregnancy, you have nine months of drama, while abortions are short and quick.

Every Little Thing in the World has found a brilliant way around this problem: send the girl off into the Canadian wilderness for the first month of her pregnancy!

Sydney's life is a mess. Her parents are divorced and seem bent on making life hell for her - her father lives on a remote farm and eschews as many modern conveniences as is physically possible, while her mother constantly complains about what a burden Sydney is and how Sydney doesn't appreciate any of her sacrifices. So when Sydney discovers she's pregnant after a brief fling, she doesn't know where to turn. And when she and best friend Natalia try to track down said boy, they end up in the middle of a party busted by the police. Before Sydney can gather the guts to tell her parents she's pregnant (and probably wants an abortion), she and Natalia are shipped off for a month long kayaking trip through the Canadian wilderness.

Sydney tries to keep her pregnancy a secret, discussing it only when alone with Natalia, who is dealing with mother-issues of her own. During the month long trip, Sydney goes back and forth on her decision about the pregnancy several times. Thanks to her family issues, Natalia begs Sydney to keep the baby, despite her initial support for Sydney's decision to abort.

Sydney isn't the only camper with secrets, however, and the supporting characters are lively with colorful secrets of their own, including the TV star with a crush on another camper; a "youth at risk" with a shady history; and the flighty, giggly girl who might actually be enjoying this trip more than she's willing to tell anyone. And the counselor who is violently opposed to actually cooking any of the food they brought along, leading to meals of raw bacon and cold baked beans and tuna fish.

Short version of my review: I really, really loved this book. It honestly looks at the realities of having an abortion or become a teen mom. Sydney has a lot of reasons to go either way with her choice, and I really didn't know until the end of the book what she was going to choose. I did know that I would be satisfied with whatever her choice was, because Sydney clearly took the time to weigh the multiple options and would be making an informed decision.

Sydney's relationship with her mother is one of the weak points here - Sydney can get really whiney about how unfair life is and how unreasonable her mother is. And legitimately, her mother sounds pretty unreasonable (is it really a wise choice to tell your child she's a burden to you?), and some amount of whining would be reasonable and expected of a teenager, but she went a little overboard. However, since her mother is only in the first few chapters before Sydney's whisked away to the parent-less camp, we don't have to put up with that for long and can get along with the main story.

There are a lot of supporting characters, some better defined than others, but all interesting and give a great background to the camp experience. Meredith and Brendan, the girl who learns to love camp and the TV star, respectively, were probably my favorites. Mick, who joined the camp as part of a "youth at risk" summer program, has the deepest and most complex back story, but I was never comfortable with him and didn't quite buy how accepting of him Natalia and Sydney grew to be. The counselors are fun, but it's not hard to see how their "hands off" attitude towards a lot of things leads to the dramatic climax of the plot.

I highly recommend this one for anyone who's looking for a book about teen pregnancy that provides a realistic look at the options a young woman has. It's a much needed addition to the teen pregnancy genre!